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J. B. J.n'J'INCOTT CO.MI'ANY. 

1889. 



DAIRY FACTORIES. 



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PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 

1889. 



Copyright, 1889, by J. B. Lippincott Company, 



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DAIRY FACTORIES. 



Dairy Factories. Dairying, as a special business, 
has been extensively developed during the latter half 
of the 19th century in America, the United States and 
Canada included, mainly through the introduction of 
the peculiarly American factory system, or associated 
dairying. The first factory was organized in the state 
of New York, by Jesse Williams, in 18^0, and the re- 
sult being exceedingly favourable in regard to the 
quality and increased market value of the product 
(which was then cheese only), many other factories 
were organized, until in 1866 there were nearly 500 of 
them in operation in the state mentioned, the cost of 
these being about ;^ 1,000,000 (;^200,ooo), with a stock 
of cows worth at the then low valuation, at least 
^10,000,000. The farms thus associated were then 
worth, for the million acres covered by them, not more 
than $40,000,000 (;!^8, 000,000), or an average of $40 
per acre. Five years later there were factories in sev- 
eral of the states and also in Canada; the list com- 
prising 946 in the state of New York, 103 in Ohio, 46 
in Illinois, 5 in Kentucky, 4 in Minnesota, 34 in Wis- 
consin, 26 in Massachusetts, 32 in Vermont, 14 in 
Pennsylvania, 7 in Iowa, 2 in Indiana, and i each in 
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kansas, and 
Connecticut. This associated industry became known 
in foreign countries as the ' American system of 



A DA TRY FACTORIES. 

dairying,' and was quickly introduced into England, 
Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Holland, and other 
countries where the dairy business was carried on ex- 
tensively, but it has not increased to anything like 
the extent it has in America. Very soon the manu- 
facture of butter was introduced into the factories, as 
well as into special establishments for butter-making 
alone, the latter being called creameries, in contradis- 
tinction to the factories where cheese only was made, 
or where butter and skim-milk cheese were made, or 
where the skim-milk was adulterated with fats and oils 
of various kinds, as substitutes for cream. It was 
about this time (1872) that the French oleo-margarine 
(a preparation of beef-fat) was introduced into the 
American dairy as a substitute for pure butter fat in 
the manufacture of cheese. It is a disagreeable truth 
to confess that this fraudulent * dairy (?) product,' as it 
is called, still maintains a firm hold upon American 
dairying, and largely as a distinct fraud, made use of 
for the purpose of making and selling adulterated 
cheese, and butter as well, for a pure product. And 
in addition to the fat of beeves, lard and cotton-seed 
oil are extensively used. Laws recently passed in 
several of the states and in the United States con- 
gress forbid the sale of butter so adulterated under 
heavy penalties, but no legislation as yet protects 
cheese from the fraudulent mixture. This stigma 
upon the American dairy (Canada, it may be said, is 
happily free from it) remains to this time a reproach 
and severe pecuniary damage to the dairy business. 

American dairy cheese is made under the well- 
known Cheddar system, so called, which is prevalent 



DAIRY FACTORIES. 5 

in parts of England, and in Ayrshire and other locali- 
ties in Scotland. This is the American cheese which 
is so well known and highly regarded in Great Britain, 
when purely made under the best system of manage- 
ment. But a considerable variety of cheese is now 
made in imitation of foreign kinds, and is used by the 
foreign-born citizens, who have not forgotten their 
acquired taste for the old home-made cheese. 

Creameries, or butter-factories, came into use with 
the cheese-factories, but were not numerous until a 
way was found to utilise the skim-milk by adding arti- 
ficial fats to it. Then the combined butter and cheese 
factory turned out its butter and its full-milk cheese 
together. This questionable method of business, how- 
ever, became unpopular, and actual creameries came 
into vogue, and have rapidly increased during the 
past few years. In 1880 there were 3932 cheese and 
butter factories in the United States; in 1888 there 
were at least 5000, the largest numerical increase hav- 
ing been in creameries. In the creamery, the cream 
gathered from 600 or 800 cows is worked up by one 
skilled butter-maker, and the product is a good article 
of even quality all through ; it is made in sufficient 
quantity for shipment and sale under the best condi- 
tions, and hence it commands a higher price than the 
best ordinary farm-dairy butter. It is made with the 
best apparatus, is packed and shipped in cold-storage 
or refrigerator cars, and reaches the domestic con- 
sumer within a week after it is made ; and the foreign 
purchaser may have it upon his table within two 
weeks of the churning in the creamery, more than 
4000 miles distant. These are advantages which the 



6 DAIRY FACTORIES. 

solitary butter-maker cannot secure ; hence he can 
only get the creamery price by securing special cus- 
tomers near his dairy. A few so-called fancy dairies 
are able to secure 40, 50, or even 75 cents (is. 8d. to 
3s.) per pound for their butter, but even the best ordi- 
nary farm-dairy butter sells at a lower price than 
creamery butter, and fully three-fourths of it sells for 
less than half the price of the other. 

American creamery butter is made by the deep set- 
ting system, borrowed from the Swedish method, and 
improved by American ingenuity. The milk is strained 
from the pail into cans 9 inches in diameter and 20 
inches deep. These are set in tanks of water cooled 
by ice to 45°. At the end of twelve to twenty-four 
hours the cream has separated, and the milk is drawn 
off by a tap in the bottom of the can, view being given 
by a strip of glass let into the side of the can. The 
cream is then drawn off by itself For the use of the 
creamery the quantity of cream is measured by the 
inch, and is paid for on the basis of so many inches to 
the pound of butter. One hundred and thirteen cubic 
inches of cream is taken as the standard in this 
respect. The creamery gathers the cream once a day, 
and secures it perfectly sweet, while the skim-milk is 
also left sweet for the feeding of calves, for sale for 
consumption, or for the making of pork. The cream 
is kept until it is slightly acid before it is churned, 
making thus a quality of butter which keeps better 
and longer than that made from sweet cream. The 
churns most popular are those without any dash, being 
a cubical box turning on an axis passing through diag- 
onal corners ; or a barrel turning on an axis passing 



DAIRY FACTORIES. y 

through its centre sidewise ; or an oblong square box 
oscillating endwise in swinging supports. The action 
of churning thus consists of a dashing of the cream vio- 
lently against the sides or ends of the churn, and, by- 
concussion, causing the globules of fat in the cream to 
adhere together, and gradually coalesce and form 
small grains of butter. When these grains are as 
large as wheat-grains, or peas at the largest, the but- 
termilk is drawn off, cold water or weak brine is 
poured into the churn, and the churn is moved gently, 
to agitate and wash the butter. When the butter has 
been completely freed from milk, and no longer clouds 
the water, it is drained, and salted with finely-ground 
pure salt, at the rate of from ^ oz. to i oz, to the 
pound of butter. The salt is easily incorporated with 
the small grains of butter, and after a rest of a few 
hours for the salt to absorb the excess of moisture 
from the butter and become completely dissolved, a 
butter-worker is used to press the butter, make it solid 
and even in texture, and as dry as possible. It is then 
packed in new spruce or oak tubs, or pails, of 20 to 
50 lb., for domestic sale, or in lOO-lb. firkins for 
export. 

The dairy interest has reached vast proportions in 
America and Canada. At least 1,500,000 farms, with 
10,000,000 cows and 100,000,000 acres of land, are 
devoted more or less closely to the various branches 
of the industry. In the most populous of the states, 
where the dairy is the principal agricultural employ- 
ment, good dairy farms are valued at ;^ioo (i^2o) per 
acre and upwards, as the buildings may be more valu- 
able than the average. The land held to be most 



8 DAIRY FACTORIES. 

suitable for the dairy is a rich limestone loam or 
gravel, that is productive of the best variety of grasses, 
especially the so-called blue grass [Poa pratcnsis), 
which affords the best pasturage. The best dairy 
districts are in the states of Vermont, New York, 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and the 
province of Ontario, in Canada. 

The cows mostly kept upon dairy fiirms are the 
Dutch or North Holland, commonly called Holstein 
or Holstein-Friesian, Shorthorns, Ayrshire, the half 
or higher bred grades of these, and the common 
' native' cows, the descendants of the promiscuous 
mixture of the various races of cattle brought into 
America. The most popular of these is the grade 
shorthorn, which may be purchased when in fresh 
milk; the Dutch cow is next in popular estimation, 
but it is scarce and high-priced, and is much less used. 
The average yield of these cows varies from 6000 to 
8000 lb. of milk per year, or between calves, where 
calves are bred ; the largest yield of the shorthorn 
and its grades averages 50 lb. daily, that of the Dutch 
cows is somewhat greater, and a few of the best have 
a record of more than 24,000 lb. of milk between 
calves and within a year. These cows can be kept 
with profit only upon high feeding and the best of 
pasture. For the butter-dairy the Jersey breed and 
its grades are the most profitable, and American pas- 
tures are now quite thickly sprinkled with the Jersey 
colours. Ayrshires come next, and the Devon follows 
in favour; but of necessity the common native and 
much cheaper cow forms the rank and file of the dairy 
herds. 



DAIRY FACTORIES. q 

In America the whole of the work of caring for 
the cows, feeding and milking them, is done by men. 
The feeding consists of pasturing wholly; pasturing 
with partial soiling, or full soiling in the summer; and 
feeding upon hay and meals of various kinds with 
pulped roots or silage in the winter. A large number 
of dairies are devoted to making butter in the winter, 
by which a higher price is obtained for the product, 
and leisure is secured in the summer for the growth 
of the feeding crops for use in the winter. With the 
rapid rise in the value of farms suited to the dairy, 
pasturing is found to be too costly for the largest 
profit, and partial soiling is almost universally re- 
sorted to. Complete soiling, by which one cow may 
be kept on the product of one acre of land all the 
year, is practised in some of the best of the fine-butter 
dairies, where land is worth $2<x> per acre or more, 
and where pure-bred Jersey, Guernsey, or Ayrshire 
cows of high value are kept, a yield of I2 to 14 lb. of 
butter per week being obtained by the high feeding 
of these cows. One of these cows, a Jersey, recently 
produced 49 lb. of butter in a week, under a forced 
test, while from 14 lb. to 24 lb. of butter weekly has 
been given by more than 100 Jersey cows now living. 
This, however, is an example of what is known as 
fancy dairying, which is closely connected with breed- 
ing cows for sale at high prices. In a good working 
dairy a cow is required to yield 7 to 10 lb. of butter 
weekly in the height of the season, and at least 200 to 
250 lb. in the season. 

The average feeding of a dairy cow in the summer 
consists of the best pasture that can be afforded, with 



lO DAIRY FACTORIES. 

some fresh green fodder as soon as the great heat of 
the summer hardens tlie grass, and from 2 to I2 quarts 
of ground feed — ground corn and oats, bran, cotton- 
seed meal, or linseed meal. A very common method 
of feeding is to give 2 or 3 quarts of mixed corn 
meal and bran, with a quart of cotton-seed meal at 
each milking time, the cows generally being brought 
to the barn to be milked. In winter, hay of clover and 
timothy grass mixed, with the same quantity above 
mentioned of meal and a peck of brewers' grains, is a 
common ration for cows kept in milk-dairies ; brewers' 
grains are not thought favourably of in cheese or 
butter dairies, where any food that readily becomes 
sour or tainted is scrupulously avoided, and is wholly 
prohibited by the owners of factories or creameries, 
and by condensers of milk. Roots of various kinds 
are rarely used in America, the hot, dry summer cli- 
mate and the greater ease of growing the equally 
valuable feeding crop, maize (commonly called corn), 
combining to make root-crops unpopular. When 
roots are grown, the long red or the yellow globe 
mangels are preferred. 

The use of ensilage has been found very convenient 
in the dairy, and this practice is rapidly extending. 
In the dairy di.stricts of Wisconsin at least 2000 silos 
were built in 1888, the serious damage to the feeding 
crops by the dry season of the previous year having 
induced dairymen to secure ample feed by growing 
corn — which suffers little from drought, and to some 
extent enjoys dry, hot weather — and preserving it 
green in silos. It is quite certain that the cheapness 
and ease of production of this grand fodder crop has 



DAIK V FACTORIES. j j 

given a greater stimulus to the American dairy than 
any other favourable circumstance. The abundance 
and cheapness of the grain (corn), and also of bran, 
enable American dairymen to produce cheap milk, 
cheese, and butter ; and there is no other class of 
American farmers who enjoy equal comfort, and even 
wealth. 



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